03-12-2003 11:15 am UNESCO Director-General Koďchiro Matsuura today condemned the assassination of television journalist Germán Antonio Rivas, killed in a town in the West of Honduras last Wednesday, and said he was confident that the authorities will do all in their power to bring the perpetrators to justice. “I condemn the cowardly assassination of Germán Antonio Rivas, a reporter and owner of the local Corporación Maya Visión television station, who was already the target of an assassination attempt in February this year.”

The Director-General stressed that “this is the first murder of a journalist in Honduras in more than 20 years,” adding: “So as to enable journalists in Honduras to continue exercising their profession - which is essential for democracy - in conditions of safety, I trust the authorities of Honduras will do all that is in their power to ensure that this murder does not go unpunished.” Mr Matsuura went on to recall that, in a Resolution they adopted at UNESCO’s General Conference in 1997, Member States undertook to bring to justice the perpetrators of crimes against journalists.

Two unidentified gunmen killed Germán Antonio Rivas, aged 48, in front of his television station in Santa Rosa de Copan, near the Guatemalan border. The journlist had already been targeted in a separate attack in February this year, shortly after reporting on coffee and cattle smuggling to Guatemala in his programme. He had also criticized a cyanide spill into the Lara River by the Minerales de Occidente mining company, which was fined Euro 140,000 for the spill.